Source: http://www.facebook.com/Liliputing/posts/472521346165077
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Sunday, June 30, 2013
What?s new in Android 4.3 Jelly Bean? - Google has yet to officially launch Andr...
'Nobody's going to Geneva,' White Rock mayor touts lower expenses
In his first full year leading the city, White Rock Mayor Wayne Baldwin claimed a third more in expenses than that claimed by his predecessor, Catherine Ferguson, in her last year at the helm.
According to a June 24 report from the city?s financial services director, Baldwin ? who was elected mayor in November 2011 ? claimed $9,831 in expenses last year. Ferguson claimed $6,960 in 2011, prior to Baldwin?s election in November, and just $3,248 in 2010, her last full year.
Baldwin told Peace Arch News the difference was likely due to Ferguson not being able to attend as many conferences.
Last year, those included the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Saskatoon and the Union of BC Municipalities in Victoria, along with events ?that I get invited to all the time, but cost a lot of money.?
?I don?t think it?s too high,? he said of the total charged to taxpayers. ?If you compare it to, say, Dianne (Watts?) in Surrey, mine is not very high. We go to the same stuff pretty much, except she goes to China and whatnot.?
At the council meeting, Baldwin noted the combined expenses of all seven of the city?s politicians ($26,054) was less than that reported by some individual Surrey council members. Watts alone charged $28,724.
?Nobody?s going to Geneva,? Baldwin quipped, an apparent reference to Watts? $2,807 trip to attend a mayors? conference in Switzerland.
Baldwin?s remuneration for 2012 was $59,023. Couns. Al Campbell, Helen Fathers, Louise Hutchinson and Larry Robinson were each paid $28,689 (up from $27,568 in 2011); Coun. Grant Meyer was paid $28,200. Meyer attributed his lesser pay to changes in the deputy-mayor schedule.
Coun. Bill Lawrence ??who won his seat in November?s byelection to replace the late Mary-Wade Anderson ? earned $2,775; Anderson, who died in June 2012, earned $12,440.
Following Baldwin, Hutchinson claimed the next highest in expenses ($4,030). Fathers was next ($3,876); then Robinson ($3,424), Meyer ($2,327), Campbell ($1,821), Anderson ($720) and Lawrence ($25).
Remuneration to city staff last year totalled $9,065,491.
Highest-paid was the city?s director of financial services, Sandra Kurylo, who received $144,341, followed by fire Chief Phil Lemire ($134,226), city manager Dan Bottrill ($133,105) and director of development services Paul Stanton ($128,544).
(Totals for Kurylo, Lemire and Stanton include pay for unused vacation and banked time.)
Bottrill?s pay represents his first 9? months with the city. He took over as city manager in mid-March of last year, following the sudden retirement of Peggy Clark, whose compensation had been a campaign issue for Baldwin. According to city documents, Clark received $185,760 in her last year as city manager.
Director of municipal operations Greg St. Louis ? whose predecessor?s wages were also criticized by Baldwin ? was not listed in the report, which included only remuneration greater than $75,000. St. Louis began working for the city July 30.
The staffer claiming the most in expenses for 2012 was Lemire, at $5,756, followed by web technician Ying Lin ($4,763); deputy fire Chief Bob Schlase ($3,909); and Kurylo ($3,710).
Figures were released as part of the city?s financial statement for the year ending Dec. 31, 2012.
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Source: http://www.peacearchnews.com/news/213589051.html
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Saturday, June 29, 2013
'Lola' tops 204 mph, breaking electric vehicle land speed record
Autos 
8 hours ago
Drayson Racing/The Detroit Bureau
Drayson Racing team members celebrate their land speed record.
With all the emphasis on electric propulsion these days, it might seem hard to believe that it?s been 39 years since General Electric ? yes, GE ? set the FIA World Electric Land Speed Record. But that achievement has finally been bested by a sleek, Le Mans Prototype dubbed ?Lola.?
On an RAF airbase in Yorkshire, England, an 850-horsepower battery-electric built by Drayson Racing hit a top speed of 204.185 miles per hour during a pair of runs down a 3-kilometer (nearly 2-mile) track. That was a full 29 mph faster than the 175 mph record set way back in 1974 by the Battery Box General Electric.
?I?m delighted we?ve beaten the record tonight and can show the world EVs can be fast and reliable,? said Lord Paul Drayson, whose firm built the 2,200 battery, and who personally piloted it during the record run. ?It is not the outright speed of 204.185 mph that is most impressive about this record, but the engineering challenge of accelerating a 1000 kilogram electric vehicle on a short runway over a measured mile.?
Officially known as the Drayson B12 69/EV the enclosed racer used ultra-light carbon fiber for its chassis and body to compensate for the heft of a 30 kilowatt-hour battery pack. It also relied on custom-designed Michelin LM P1 tires.
Though most folks likely associate electric propulsion with ? but slow ? vehicles like the Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt, the reality is that battery power can also deliver some impressive performance as an electric motor yields maximum torque the moment it starts spinning.
Drayson?s Lola can launch from 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds, for example, and keep gaining speed until it?s pushed well past 200 mph. In fact, Lord Drayson is apparently looking to soon beat his own record, tweeting to fans that on an additional run the car was ?very lively at 216 mph.?
While he may be celebrating victory, the claimed record could come under dispute. The Buckeye Bullet, an EV built by students at Ohio State University, actually achieved a 307.7 mph average during two runs at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah in August 2010 ? and was seen as capable of reaching 400 mph. But that effort was not officially sanctioned by the FIA, leaving GE?s Battery Box the certified record-holder for another three years.
To proponents, what matters most is the increasing focus in electric racing and battery propulsion, in general.
There?s clearly a lot more interest, for example, has nudged its ZEOD RC battery race car up to 186 mph, and Top EV Racing claims to have launched its battery dragster from 0 to 100 in a mind-boggling 0.8 seconds.
What could put battery racing square in the public eye is the new Formula E series set to launch in 2015. Not surprisingly, Lord Drayson is looking to participate when that program gets underway.
Copyright ? 2009-2013, The Detroit Bureau
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Op-Ed Contributor: Native Alaska, Under Threat
[unable to retrieve full-text content]A proposed mine threatens a vibrant Alaskan salmon fishery.
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/native-culture-under-threat.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Friday, June 28, 2013
The Coal Lobby's Fight for Survival
For a century, coal dominated America's energy landscape, cheaply fueling the factories of the Rust Belt and lighting up homes across the country. King Coal also enjoyed almost unrivaled influence in Washington. On Capitol Hill, the muscular coal lobby routinely rolled its opponents. In particular, the clout of the coal lobby?and the money it doled out?was a major reason Congress has never enacted a serious climate-change law.
Now all that's changing. Coal is under siege from forces beyond its control. Its dominant place in the American economy is slipping?and so, for the first time in a century, is its ability to get what it wants from Washington. There are two big reasons for this. The first is economic: Over the past two years, as a glut of cheap natural gas has flooded the U.S. energy market, coal has been pushed out. The second is more existential: The world is waking up to the fact that pollution from coal-burning plants is the chief cause of global warming. Although some coal companies still deny that, governments around the world don't?and they are pushing policies to end coal's use. In the U.S., President Obama is deploying the full force of his executive authority to crack down on climate change. Coal is now reckoning with its role in global warming, whether it likes it or not.
Obama made that plain this week with his sweeping speech laying out a climate plan that could devastate the U.S. coal industry. New Environmental Protection Agency regulations will at the very least freeze construction of coal plants and likely lead to the shutdown of existing plants. "Power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air for free," Obama said. "That's not right, that's not safe, and it needs to stop. So today, for the sake of our children, and the health and safety of all Americans, I'm directing the Environmental Protection Agency to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants."
Once upon a time, such an announcement?a shot across the bow of King Coal?would have been political suicide. No more. The mine is collapsing.
To understand how the coal lobby has foundered, look at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the coal-advocacy coalition that for the past five years has been the most public and aggressive face of the industry. ACCCE was born in Washington in 2008 out of the merger of two older coal advocacy groups for the express purpose of fighting a Senate climate-change bill. Since then, the group has spent tens of millions of dollars annually on television advertising celebrating the role of so-called "clean coal" in the economy and slamming EPA regulations that could hurt coal.
Last year, in the heat of the presidential campaign, ACCCE hired a new CEO, Robert "Mike" Duncan, the ultimate old-school Republican operator. A former head of the Republican National Committee and regional chairman of George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Duncan cofounded American Crossroads, Karl Rove's super PAC juggernaut that helped drive the 2010 GOP takeover of the House. Duncan also brought a personal touch to coal advocacy: The Appalachia native is the grandson of two Kentucky coal miners.
Duncan took over just as ACCCE was supercharging the role of coal in the 2012 campaign. In October, just ahead of the presidential debates, the group launched a $35 million ad campaign attacking Obama for shutting down coal plants, destroying jobs, and hobbling the nation's economy. The lobby conducted nonstop TV, Facebook, and Web video campaigns, it sent its "citizen army" to rally for Mitt Romney in coal country, and it ignited the narrative that Obama was waging a "war on coal." It was a culmination of the coal industry's multiyear push against the Obama administration's energy policies, and coal threw everything it had against him. From 2008 to 2012, the industry nearly quadrupled its political contributions, directing 90 percent of its money toward Republicans.
The effort to get Obama out of the White House was a total failure. He won reelection comfortably, carrying all the key swing states that produce the most coal: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia, leaving the industry with but a giant swath of scorched earth.
The lobby was left in disarray. "They hit the panic button," said an energy consultant who once worked as a contractor for ACCCE and who like many who spoke with National Journal asked to remain anonymous out of respect for Duncan and the lobby.
ACCCE responded with a staffing purge. In the first half of this year, Duncan fired or didn't renew the contracts of a slew of top coalition officials, including three vice presidents and the senior vice president for communications. In January, ACCCE put out a request for proposals to 51 Washington strategy and PR firms, looking for a consultant who could help stanch the bleeding and forge a new message. Duncan's pick for the job was JDA Frontline, led by a trio of seasoned Republican strategists?Jim Dyke, Kevin Sheridan, and Kevin Madden. JDA president Dyke is a former RNC spokesman who worked in the George W. Bush administration. Sheridan, a wiry, intense political operative, most recently served as vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan's communications director. Madden, the affable and polished former chief spokesman for Romney's 2008 campaign was also an adviser to the GOP candidate's 2012 effort. In May, Sheridan moved over to ACCCE's corporate headquarters full time to work on a new plan for the old industry. In the coming weeks, the group will roll out a new public-relations and lobbying blitz aimed at resetting its message and defusing antagonism with the administration. Instead of saturating Fox News with "war on coal" ads, the group will send Duncan on cable news and the editorial-board circuit to talk about coal's role in the economy and how to create a "path forward" for with new technology.
Behind the scenes, however, the coal companies and the consultants who represent them in Washington are often at loggerheads. Privately, many people working for the coal lobby concede that time has finally come for coal to face up to climate change. They don't want the coal industry to look like a science-denying dinosaur?a charge that's also been leveled against many Republicans on the far right. They recognize that the game has changed, with a new energy market and administration that will regulate them against their will. They believe it's time to stop the war, engage the enemy, and to ask it for help, both in developing environmental regulations and researching the new technology. But that thought turns the stomach of the corporate chiefs at some of the country's oldest coal companies?the titans used to the halcyon days of coal power.
Here's how a longtime Republican energy strategist put it: "When you can't make the phone call saying, 'Don't fuck with me anymore,' you have to change what you're doing."
IN DECLINE
The numbers tell the story of coal's fall. Since 2004, the share of U.S. electricity from natural gas jumped from 16 percent to 26 percent, while the share from coal plummeted from 51 percent to 40 percent, according to the Energy Department. Last year coal production fell to just 37 percent of the power mix, although it picked up slightly when natural-gas prices rose?a signal that should prices rise again, coal could regain some of its lost ground. Of course, that's a circumstance over which coal has no control, and, meanwhile, Obama's climate rules will all but ensure electric utilities won't invest in new coal plants.
The fact is, coal is a smaller piece of the economy than it once was. At the heart of coal's 2012 campaign message was an assertion that new EPA coal rules would cost millions of jobs. But, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are only 84,000 U.S. jobs in coal mining. While miners will surely suffer if coal continues to decline, the hard political fact is that the number of people employed in the industry just isn't enough to make a difference in a national election. The coal industry hopes that even if U.S. coal production shuts down, it could find salvation in overseas markets, by exporting coal to China and Europe. But Obama put the kibosh on that this week, too. He called on all world governments to end public funding for coal-fired power plants?a move the U.S. can enforce through its influence in organizations like the World Bank. "That definitely sent a signal that the U.S. doesn't support coal in the world," said Jennifer Morgan, an analyst with the World Resources Institute, a think tank.
Between the boom in natural gas, the force of the new regulations, and the diminished political clout of coal country, "I don't think they're having an existential crisis," another D.C. energy strategist said about the coal lobby. "I think they're already dead, and just don't know it yet."
That's left energy lobbyists in Washington openly questioning ACCCE's future; many say it might not be around a year from now. By all accounts, the only way for coal to carve a future for itself will be to do something that would gall many GOP operatives?ask the Obama administration for help.
Many also question whether Duncan, the ultimate Republican political operative, who started out by hiring Romney campaign staffers, is the right man for the job. Former Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher lives in coal-rich southwest Virginia, and he knows the politics of coal all too well. In 2009, he negotiated for coal to get huge carve-outs in a House climate-change bill, but his constituents voted him out of office anyway, just for backing the bill. Boucher, who now consults at the law firm Sidley Austin, said of Duncan, "I was puzzled by that. It seems that in hiring him, the organization moved to the right at a moment when the country is not moving to the right."
For coal to save itself, "it would be a very important first step to open a dialogue with the Obama administration and expand their support to strong Democratic and Republican centrist politicians," says Merribel Ayres, president of Lighthouse Consulting Group, a firm that advises many of the nation's biggest energy companies on lobbying and PR strategy.
"Fighting like it's a war is very different from trying to forge a truce," Ayres says. "Forging the game plan for a truce is very different than designing a battle plan."
THE LIFELINE
The term "clean coal" is tricky one; it can mean different things, depending on whom you ask. Coal is a dirty fuel. It doesn't just spew carbon dioxide, it also produces toxic pollutants such as mercury, which is associated with birth defects and neurological disorders, and sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. Thanks to a 1990 clean-air law, the coal industry is required to fit its smokestacks with filters and scrubbers that "clean" those toxins from the coal. And for a lot of the coal industry, that's what "clean coal" means. Last year, ACCCE sent out a mobile classroom?a van outfitted with examples of such filters and scrubbers?to "clean-coal" rallies in swing states to make the case that the industry has already invested in clean-coal technology. But smokestacks and scrubbers don't do anything about coal's carbon dioxide emissions?the stuff that causes climate change. And right now, there is no affordable technology to clean the carbon out of coal.
As it happens, a group of scientists are working on just that?a breakthrough technology called "carbon capture and sequestration," which would do pretty much what the name says. Carbon capture, installed in a coal-fired power plant, pulls the global-warming pollution from burning coal and sequesters it by injecting it deep into underground caverns. The good news for the coal industry is that carbon capture exists and that it works. The bad news is that for now, it's far too expensive to be deployed on a commercial scale. For a coal plant to install carbon-capture technology today would send the price of coal-fired electricity soaring.
"A breakthrough in affordable carbon capture is the lifeline for coal," said Alex Trembath, an energy analyst with the Breakthrough Institute, a California think tank, and the coauthor of a report out this week titled "Coal Killer: How Natural Gas Fuels the Clean Energy Revolution."
"There's still a lot of coal with us, but to use it, we have to make [carbon capture] affordable and cheap. That's a big if. But if the coal industry wants to survive, they've got to get together about carbon pollution, and think seriously about carbon capture."
Success is far from guaranteed. The Energy Department has been trying to find a breakthrough in carbon capture since the George W. Bush administration, and has so far spent more than $5 billion on the effort, but many scientists doubt the technology will ever work.
Affordable carbon-capture technology is coal's moon shot. Because the research is so expensive and the chance of a breakthrough so far off, only one entity is investing significantly in finding a solution: the U.S. government. Specifically, it's an Energy Department lab called ARPA-E, which stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The lab is modeled after the Defense Department's DARPA, which developed the Internet and other breakthrough technologies. ARPA-E's mandate is to find the 21st-century equivalent of an energy moonshot: cheap, affordable, reliable energy that won't contribute to global warming.
ARPA-E is also a signature Obama program. The funding to start the lab came from the president's 2009 stimulus law, part of $40 billion invested in clean-energy programs?the same funds Republicans derided as "green pork." ARPA-E was also a favorite of Steven Chu, Obama's first-term Energy secretary, a physicist who has devoted his career to fighting climate change and who earned the coal industry's undying enmity when he delivered a 2007 speech declaring "coal is my nightmare."
ARPA-E does groundbreaking work, but a study by the Electric Power Research Institute concluded that it would take $1 billion of government spending annually, for a decade, on carbon research to achieve a breakthrough. Last year, ARPA-E's entire budget was $400 million.
But other federal agencies are getting in on the carbon-sequestration act as well. On the heels of Obama's climate-change speech, the Interior Department announced that the U.S. Geological Survey will release the first-ever national geologic carbon sequestration assessment?in other words, the government is researching where carbon can be captured and stored underground, in a possible future fueled by carbon-capture coal plants.
The irony is extreme: The coal industry is deeply allied with the Republican Party and worked tirelessly to eject Obama from office. But its salvation may rest with his administration.
ADMITTING THE PROBLEM
Until this year, the members of ACCCE?companies such as Peabody Energy, American Electric Power, and Murray Energy?had almost never even talked about climate change and had shown little interest in working with the Obama administration. There are signs that attitude is shifting.
Earlier this month, I sat down with Duncan and ACCCE's senior lobbyist, Paul Bailey, at their downtown Washington office, a suite of sleek glass-walled rooms trimmed with silver and filled with all-white furniture, to discuss the lobby's new approach.
Duncan, with his campaign background, broad smile, and ease with talking points, will spend the coming months on Fox News and CNN, at town-hall talks and newspaper editorial-board meetings, trying to sell new, post-2012 coal talking points. But Bailey, a quiet wonk-cum-lobbyist who thinks and speaks with nuance and precision?about climate science, environmental policy, and the legal implications of EPA's climate regulations?will have the harder job. As the coal industry makes its first overtures to the Obama administration, it's Bailey who has gone to the White House, and it's Bailey who will represent coal in meetings with EPA.
I asked them, "Is coal having an existential crisis?"
Bailey looked thoughtful. "Is this our Nietzsche moment?" he mused.
"It's our Mark Twain moment," said Duncan. "The reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated."
Asked if burning coal causes climate change, Duncan had the air of a man ready to admit he has a problem.
"I'm not going to sit here and deny carbon and the concerns that are out there," he said.
The words were innocuous enough, but the message it conveyed was anything but. The industry that for so long stood on war footing with this administration sounds prepared to sue for peace. In fact, Duncan appears to have a surprisingly good command of climate science. He can speak comfortably, for example, about the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that scientists say will push the Earth to a so-called climate tipping point, a wonky, divisive subject on which it's highly unusual to find a former RNC chair and current coal lobbyist so conversant.
Duncan added, "The concerns are there. We want to offer solutions that keep us competitive in the world, make us secure, provide jobs for people, and have the best environmental footprint."
Earlier, in a conversation with Duncan late last year, I asked him how that might happen. The Republican coal lobbyist brought up Obama's pet clean-energy research lab. "They're doing some great research on this at ARPA-E," Duncan said. "It could make a difference for the country."
Bailey also has high hopes for ARPA-E. "There are technologies that are just over the horizon. There are all sorts of ways to reduce carbon in the air." Bailey has discussed inviting scientists from the ARPA-E labs to ACCCE's annual board meeting in November, to talk to the group's members about how their research can help.
Meanwhile, Bailey is gearing up to pay a visit to EPA, the same agency that coal companies spent months lambasting on the campaign trail. "We'd just like to start a conversation with them," he said.
While Republicans in the Senate have so far held up the confirmation of Gina McCarthy, Obama's pick to head EPA and thus to oversee the climate regulations, Bailey hopes she could be receptive to coal's entreaties to at least put out looser rules, with a longer time frame.
"The relationship between [Obama's first-term EPA chief] Lisa Jackson and coal was not good. We hope that if Gina is confirmed, we'll have a better relationship with EPA."
THE DIVIDE
But it's far from certain how receptive ACCCE's member companies will be to a visit from ARPA-E's scientists, or to a push from Washington consultants to openly acknowledge coal's contribution to climate change, or to the idea of going hat in hand to EPA. The lobbying coalition is composed of a mix of companies?coal producers, electric utilities, and railroads, which transport coal?with a wide range of views on carbon, climate science, and the Obama administration. By all accounts, the groups have often struggled to find consensus. One former contractor to ACCCE put it this way: "Talk about a coalition that hates each other."
And the issue of climate change could cleave the coalition entirely.
One of ACCCE's most important members is Ohio-based Murray Energy, the nation's largest privately owned coal producer. "There is no relationship between the utilization of coal and climate change," company spokesman Gary Broadbent wrote to me in an e-mail. "Our members of Congress, and particularly the Obama administration, confuse scientific facts and evidence with their own beliefs."
And what about the idea that carbon-capture technology can save coal?
"The government has already spent substantially on carbon capture and storage ("CCS") technology, and we have not made progress," Broadbent wrote. "The promise of CCS technology is used by politicians to pretend that they are doing something for the coal industry, when they are not."
Electric utilities are another story entirely. ACCCE member American Electric Power, an Ohio-based company which owns the nation's largest fleet of coal-fired power plants, has been expecting Obama's climate-change announcement for months, and company officials have been meeting with EPA to negotiate the terms of the climate rules.
These officials praised McCarthy for working with them. "Early on, Gina brought us in to talk about the rules," John McManus, AEP's vice president of environmental services, told me earlier this year. "We talked about timing, technology, and cost. My sense is that Gina is listening, has an open mind; she wants to hear the concerns of the regulated sector."
AEP's answer to the climate-change rules has been more adaptive than antagonistic: Rather than accuse Obama of waging war on coal, it is simply closing its coal plants and turning to natural gas. "We support fuel diversity for the U.S., which means keeping coal in the mix for generation, but we also will be retiring a significant amount of coal-fueled generation in the next few years and expect that we won't been building any additional coal-fueled plants in the next few decades," said AEP spokeswoman Melissa McCarthy.
To survive, the coal lobby will likely have to show more of that flexibility.? The internal divides make it hard for the coal lobby to advocate for itself, but it's trying. The first step will be ACCCE's new summer campaign, which will involve far more conciliatory rhetoric and far less anti-Obama bombast.
It will also involve less money. For the past five years, ACCCE has fought for coal with huge television ad campaigns, with lavish annual budgets sometimes exceeding $40 million. But for coal to save its own life, the industry will need a lot more than new talking points. It will need to wake up to an entirely different reality, one that it accepts?not denies.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/coal-lobbys-fight-survival-060025322.html
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Private equity circles MoneyGram: sources
By Greg Roumeliotis and Soyoung Kim
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Carlyle Group LP
Bain Capital LLC and GTCR LLC are also participating in the auction for MoneyGram, which is being run by Bank of America Corp
Two industry players are also in contact with MoneyGram about a potential takeover, one of the sources said. The identity of these parties could not be learned.
MoneyGram, Bank of America, Carlyle, TPG, Bain and GTCR declined to comment.
MoneyGram shares jumped 2.5 percent on the report, giving the company a market value of $1.3 billion. Through Thursday, the shares had risen 65 percent this year, compared with a 13 percent rise for the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic>.
The news service Dealreporter reported on June 18 that MoneyGram was exploring a sale. The company's stock was already on the rise on expectations shareholders would get more of the company's cash flow as dividends.
With more than 321,000 locations in retailers, post offices and banks in 198 countries and territories, MoneyGram is second only to Western Union Co
MoneyGram started as a small money order company in Minneapolis in 1940 and now boasts more than twice the locations of McDonald's Corp
The Dallas-based company faced a serious liquidity crunch in 2008 after investing in subprime and other risky asset-backed securities, but it was rescued through a $1.5 billion equity and debt deal clinched with Goldman Sachs Group Inc
MoneyGram staged a comeback and in 2012 reported record sales of $1.34 billion, but its profits suffered as a result of legal expenses incurred in consumer fraud cases involving its agents.
The 2008 recapitalization has left Goldman Sachs and Thomas H. Lee owning about 70 percent of the company. An outright sale of MoneyGram could allow the two firms to exit their investment faster, and potentially more lucratively, than through smaller secondary offerings of shares over time.
(Additional reporting by Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and John Wallace)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/private-equity-circles-moneygram-sources-151116565.html
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Thursday, June 27, 2013
Syria death toll tops 100,000, rebels lose border town
By Dominic Evans and Oliver Holmes
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces have retaken a town on the Lebanese border as they press an offensive against rebels in a conflict that has now cost more than 100,000 lives, activists said on Wednesday.
The army took full control of Tel Kalakh, driving out insurgents and ending an unofficial truce under which it had allowed a small rebel presence to remain for several months.
The fall of Tel Kalakh, two miles from the border with Lebanon, marks another gain for Assad after the capture of the rebel stronghold of Qusair this month, and consolidates his control around the central city of Homs, which links Damascus to his Alawite heartland overlooking the Mediterranean coast.
Like Qusair, Tel Kalakh was used by rebels in the early stages of the conflict as a transit point for weapons and fighters smuggled into Syria to join the fight against Assad.
Pro-Assad websites showed video footage of soldiers patrolling the town in armored cars and on foot.
"Terrorist groups infiltrated and terrorized the local people," an army officer said in the video. "In response to the request of the local people, the army entered Tel Kalakh to cleanse the area and restore security."
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group, said rebels left the town on Tuesday, retreating towards the nearby Crusader fort of Crac des Chevaliers. Three rebels were killed as the army moved in.
Six months ago, Assad's opponents were challenging the president's grip on parts of Damascus, but are now under fierce military pressure there, while their supply lines from neighboring Jordan and Lebanon have steadily been choked off.
DEATH TOLL TOPS 100,000
In response to Assad's gains, achieved with the support of Lebanon's pro-Iranian Hezbollah fighters who spearheaded the assault on Qusair, Western and Arab nations pledged at the weekend to send urgent military aid to the rebels.
Hezbollah's involvement has highlighted the increasingly sectarian dynamic in the Syrian conflict. Hezbollah and Tehran back Assad, whose Alawite minority is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, while Sunni Muslim states such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have stepped up support for the mainly Sunni rebels.
Radical Sunni militants from abroad, some of them linked to al Qaeda, are also coming in to fight alongside the rebels.
Jordan's King Abdullah said the war could ignite conflict across the Middle East unless global powers helped to convene peace talks soon.
"It has become clear to all that the Syrian crisis may extend from being a civil war to a regional and sectarian conflict...the extent of which is unknown," the monarch told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in an interview.
"It is time for a more serious Arab and international coordination to stop the deterioration of the Syrian crisis. The situation cannot wait any longer," he added.
But prospects for proposed "Geneva 2" peace talks look bleak. Talks on Tuesday between the United States and Russia, which support opposing sides in Syria, produced no agreement on who should attend the conference or when it should be held.
Saudi Arabia, which views Shi'ite Iran as its arch-rival, has stepped up aid to Syrian rebels in recent months, supplying anti-aircraft missiles among other weapons.
"Syria is facing a double-edged attack. It is facing genocide by the government and an invasion from outside the government," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Tuesday. "(It) is facing a massive flow of weapons to aid and abet that invasion and that genocide. This must end."
The Observatory, which monitors violence through a network of security and medical sources in Syria, said the death toll from two years of conflict had risen above 100,000 - making it by far the deadliest of the uprisings to have swept the region.
It said the figure included 18,000 rebel fighters and about 40,000 soldiers and pro-Assad militiamen. But the true number of combatants killed was likely to be double that due to both sides' secrecy in reporting casualties, it said.
In addition to the casualties, it said, 10,000 people had been detained by pro-Assad forces and 2,500 soldiers and loyalist militiamen had been captured by the rebels.
The United Nations has put the death toll from the 27-month-old conflict at 93,000 by the end of April.
The violence has fuelled instability and sectarian tensions in Syria's neighbors, particularly Iraq and Lebanon.
At least 40 people were killed this week in the Lebanese city of Sidon in clashes between the army and gunmen loyal to a firebrand Sunni cleric who backs the Syrian rebels and has urged Sunnis to challenge Hezbollah's military might in Lebanon.
On Wednesday, unidentified attackers stabbed at least five passengers on a bus carrying Syrians in Beirut, security sources said. None of the victims was seriously wounded, they said.
(For an interactive look at the Syrian uprising - http://link.reuters.com/rut37s)
(Editing by Alistair Lyon)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-u-fail-set-syria-peace-talks-074752996.html
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GOHMERT! Gay Marriage Means the End of Civilization (Little green footballs)
Obama clashes with African host over gay rights
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) ? President Barack Obama on Thursday praised the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage as a "victory for American democracy" but clashed with his African host over gay rights in a sign of how far the movement has to go internationally.
Obama said recognition of gay unions in the United States should cross state lines and that equal rights should be recognized universally. It was his first chance to expand on his thoughts about the ruling, which was issued Wednesday as he flew to Senegal, one of many African countries that outlaw homosexuality.
Senegalese President Macky Sall rebuffed Obama's call for Africans to give gays equal rights under the law.
"We are still not ready to decriminalize homosexuality," Sall said, while insisting that the country is "very tolerant" and needs more time to digest the issue without pressure. "This does not mean we are homophobic."
Obama said gay rights didn't come up in their private meeting at the presidential palace, a mansion that looks somewhat similar to the White House. But Obama said he wants to send a message to Africans that while he respects differing personal and religious views on the matter, it's important to have nondiscrimination under the law.
"People should be treated equally, and that's a principle that I think applies universally," he said.
A report released Monday by Amnesty International says 38 African countries criminalize homosexuality. In four of those ? Mauritania, northern Nigeria, southern Somalia and Sudan ? the punishment is death. These laws appear to have broad public support. A June 4 Pew Research Center survey found at least nine of 10 respondents in Senegal, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria believe homosexuality should not be accepted by society.
Papi Nbodj, a 19-year-old student who stood by the road to the presidential palace to see Obama's arrival, said homosexuality is against the religious beliefs of most in Senegal.
"We are in a Muslim country, so we certainly cannot have it here," he said. "And for me it's not OK to have this anywhere in the world."
Sall sought to reassure Obama that gays are not persecuted in Senegal. But under Senegalese law, "an improper or unnatural act with a person of the same sex" can be punished by up to five years in prison.
Ndeye Kebe, president of a human rights organization that works with homosexuals called Women's Smile, disputed Sall's contention that gays are not discriminated against.
"I know of around a dozen people who are in prison for homosexuality as we speak," she said. "There wasn't any real proof against them, but they were found guilty and they are in prison."
And as recently as February of 2008, police rounded up men suspected of being homosexual after a Senegalese tabloid published photographs of a clandestine gay wedding in a suburb of Dakar. Gays went into hiding or fled to neighboring countries, but they were pushed out of Gambia by the president's threat of decapitation.
As for Wednesday's court ruling, Obama said he's directing his administration to comb through every federal statute to quickly determine the implications of a decision that gave the nation's legally married gay couples equal federal footing with all other married Americans.
He said he wants to make sure that gay couples who deserve benefits under the ruling get them quickly. Obama said he personally believes that gay couples legally married in one state should retain their benefits if they move to another state that doesn't recognize gay marriage.
"I believe at the root of who we are as a people, as Americans, is the basic precept that we are all equal under the law," he said. "We believe in basic fairness. And what I think yesterday's ruling signifies is one more step towards ensuring that those basic principles apply to everybody."
Obama also offered prayers for former South African President Nelson Mandela, who is gravely ill, ahead of Obama's planned visit to his country this weekend. Obama said he was inspired to become political active by Mandela's example in the anti-apartheid movement of being willing to sacrifice his life for a belief in equal treatment.
"I think he's a hero for the world," Obama said. "And if and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we'll all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages."
Later Obama plans to reflect on the ties many African-Americans share with the continent as he takes a tour of Goree Island, Africa's westernmost point. Africans reportedly were shipped off into slavery across the Atlantic Ocean through the island's "Door of No Return."
Thousands of boisterous revelers welcomed Obama's motorcade Thursday morning in Dakar, cheering and waving homemade signs as the first African-American president made his way to the presidential palace. A large sign outside his hotel gate had pictures of smiling Obama and Sall that read, "Welcome home, President Obama." Some in the crowd drummed, danced and sang, and many wore white as a symbol for peace.
Obama's focus in Senegal is on the modern-day achievements of the former French colony after half a century of independence. Sall ousted an incumbent who attempted to change the constitution to make it easier for him to be re-elected and pave the way for his son to succeed him. The power grab sparked protests, fueled by hip-hop music and social media, that led to Sall's election.
"Senegal is one of the most stable democracies in Africa and one of the strongest partners that we have in the region," Obama said. "It's moving in the right direction with reforms to deepen democratic institutions."
But such people-powered democratic transitions are not always the story of the African experience. Fighting and human rights abuses limited Obama's options for stops in his first major tour of sub-Saharan Africa since he took office more than four years ago. Obama is avoiding his father's homeland, Kenya, whose president has been charged with war crimes, and Nigeria, the country with the continent's most dominant economy. Nigeria is enveloped in an Islamist insurgency and military crackdown.
Obama's itinerary in Senegal was designed to send a message, purposefully delivered in a French-speaking, Muslim-majority nation, to other Africans in countries that have not made the strides toward democracy that Senegal has. Obama plans to meet with civil society leaders at the Goree Institute and visited the Supreme Court to speak about the importance of an independent judiciary and the rule of law in Africa's development.
___
Associated Press reporters Rukmini Callimachi and Robbie Corey-Boulet contributed to this report.
Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-clashes-african-host-over-gay-rights-134627018.html
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Senators push to suspend trade benefits for Bangladesh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nine U.S. senators on Tuesday urged President Barack Obama to suspend trade benefits for Bangladesh until the country where 1,129 people died in an April garment factory collapse improved its working conditions.
"We urge that the administration suspend Bangladesh's eligibility for GSP (Generalized System of Preferences), and establish a roadmap and timeline for reinstatement based upon tangible improvements in worker safety and related labor law reforms," the group of Democratic senators said.
Obama is expected to decide by the end of June whether to suspend Bangladesh from the GSP program, which waives U.S. import duties on thousands of goods from poor countries to spur economic development.
Suspending Bangladesh from the program would be mostly symbolic since the Asian nation's main export, clothing, is not eligible for GSP tariff cuts, in deference to the U.S. textile and apparel industry.
But it would be another blow to the country's reputation in the wake of the collapse in April of the Rana Plaza commercial building, which housed a number of garment factories, and the Tazreen factory fire in November that killed 112 people.
Last year, the GSP program spared Bangladesh about $2 million in duties on $35 million worth of tents, golf equipment, plates and other items it exported to the United States, said Ed Gresser, a trade analyst with the GlobalWorks Foundation.
Bangladesh paid $732 million in duties on $4.9 billion worth of clothing exports to the United States, he said.
The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor organization, first filed a petition to suspend Bangladesh from the GSP in 2007.
The U.S. government has put off that decision for six years, hoping the threat would be enough to encourage Bangladesh to make labor reforms.
U.S. trade officials emphasized that suspending trade benefits was seen as "the last resort" while expressing frustration that Bangladesh had made little progress addressing longstanding U.S. concerns over its labor conditions.
"President Obama must do everything in his power to prevent tragedies like the Bangladesh factory collapse from happening again," Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat said in a statement with the other senators.
Earlier this month, an AFL-CIO official said she expected Obama would decide to suspend the benefits.
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Bill Trott and Paul Simao)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senators-urge-obama-suspend-trade-benefits-bangladesh-152119748.html
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
LG Optimus G2 appears in leaked slides
A Wild LG Optimus G2 appears; uses dual-buttons. It's super-effective!
If you weren't pretty sure we are about to see the LG Optimus G2 in New York on August 7, you haven't been paying close attention. That's OK, rumors fly around and they can be hard to keep track of, but usually pictures make it easier. Thanks to habitual leaker @evleaks, we now have a few.
Nothing that confirms or denies the expected specs of a Snapdragon S800 processor and 1080p HD display, but LG and Qualcomm pretty much let that out of the bag a week or so ago.
What is interesting is that the mystery buttons on the back of the device are shown in these pictures, along with a slide that leads us to believe they will be tied to the volume setting. We'll likely know all there is to know in a little over a month, but for now we can look at the images and speculate. Hit the break to see the rest.
Source: @evleaks. h/t Jerry's Kid!
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/dhHeyqbOXeE/story01.htm
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Supreme Court ruling worries blacks in Ala county
COLUMBIANA, Ala. (AP) ? Much has changed in Shelby County since Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act to protect minority rights at the polls, but much hasn't.
The county ? which successfully challenged one of the law's key provisions before the U.S. Supreme Court ? has grown exponentially in the past five decades, yet its racial balance has remained roughly constant with whites constituting an overwhelming majority of the population.
Blacks have made electoral gains, but white conservatives remain in firm control of the sprawling marble courthouse and most of the county's towns despite a smattering of black elected officials.
In 2010, Shelby County lawyers filed a lawsuit arguing that the standards of the 1960s aren't relevant when it comes to which states and localities deserve strict federal oversight for any changes to election practices. The case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on Monday that a group of mostly southern states no longer had to seek Justice Department approval of such electoral changes.
Some black residents are now wary of what might come next, including the lone black holding a countywide office, Republican Aubrey Miller.
"It's a premature burial of the Voting Rights Act," said Miller, the county school board president. "This essentially kills the law."
Lifelong black resident Ernest Montgomery said Shelby County has made tremendous progress in race relations since the 1960s, but he was still disheartened by the ruling.
"The reason progress has been made, and so much progress has been made, is because of that kind of legislation and those type of laws that have helped to level the playing field," said Montgomery, 56.
The court's decision hinged a municipal election involving Montgomery in the town of Calera in Shelby County, a bedroom community in metro Birmingham.
Shelby County ? one of the wealthiest, best-educated counties in Alabama ? has a population of about 197,000 that is 83 percent white. A mix of suburbs and hilly forests, it's home to both Alabama's largest shopping mall and its biggest state park; a Confederate cemetery and pricey bistros.
The county began booming as white residents fled Birmingham following the 1960s, a decade marked by racial strife in the city. The county's population has increased five-fold since 1970, and what were once lazy two-lane roads are now highways clogged with rush-hour traffic.
Located about 33 miles south of Birmingham, Calera straddles Interstate 65 and is best known for its Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum, which includes two restored depots and a collection of vintage rail cars. The town of about 11,700 is more than 71 percent white, according to Census Bureau statistics, but it's also one of Shelby County's more diverse cities with a population that is 23 percent black.
Montgomery became the only black member of the five-person Calera City Council in 2004, winning in a district that was almost 71 percent black. The city redrew its district lines in 2006 after new subdivisions and retail developments sprang up in the area Montgomery represented, and the change left Montgomery's District 2 with a population that was only 23 percent black.
Running against a white opponent, Montgomery narrowly lost a re-election bid in 2008. The Justice Department invalidated the election results because the city had failed to get federal approval of the new districts under the Voting Rights Act.
The council switched to an at-large election plan in 2009, and Montgomery won one of the six seats on the expanded council. He won re-election in August, finishing third among nine candidates for the at-large seats.
With Calera's attempt to redraw its voting lines blocked by the federal government, Shelby County filed suit in 2010 to void the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act. The Rev. Harry S. Jones, Montgomery's pastor, said he agreed to intervene in the case on the Justice Department's side after learning from the NAACP what the county's Republican-controlled government was attempting to do.
Butch Ellis has been Shelby County's lawyer for 49 years and recalls the days when the county enforced the state's literacy test, in which would-be voters had to copy part of the U.S. Constitution before registering to vote. The practice disenfranchised large numbers of minority voters who lacked quality educations in a segregated school system.
He was first hired when Shelby County was controlled by Democrats and stayed on as the county passed to Republican control starting in the 1980s, when much of the South flipped to the GOP.
Ellis said Shelby County is a different place today than it was when the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. The Supreme Court, Ellis said, was correct in saying a key provision of the law isn't constitutional unless Congress develops a new formula for determining which states and municipalities deserve extra scrutiny because of race.
"We've just elected a black member of the county board of education in a countywide race over a white incumbent with no divisive issues involved," Ellis said.
Miller won that race which Ellis described, but he isn't sure his election was such a watershed event. He is, after all, the only black to hold countywide office.
"I do not take a lot of pride in the fact that it turns out to be the exception rather than the rule," Miller said.
Now, Miller said, he fears Shelby County and the rest of the South will slide backward toward discrimination since the court has said the Justice Department lacks the power to approve or disapprove changes in local balloting procedures unless Congress makes changes.
"I don't think there's any hope Congress will do anything to tweak the law," he said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-ruling-worries-blacks-ala-county-182600859.html
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Tuesday, June 25, 2013
IRS Says It Screened Groups Based on 'Questionable Criteria' Until June
Danny Werfel WASHINGTON - Not only did the Internal Revenue Service continue using inappropriate criteria to screen organizations applying for tax-exempt status until mid-June, it now appears that in addition to conservative groups, liberal groups were also targeted for higher scrutiny, IRS Principal Deputy Commissioner Danny Werfel said today.
Werfel also acknowledged that until he discovered the use of such criteria during an internal review of the agency, other "be on the lookout" or BOLO lists were in place that screened applications for 501(c)4 tax exempt status based on a wide range of "questionable criteria" including the word " progressive."
Previously, a Treasury Inspector General report only identified terms like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" that were used to identify conservative-leaning groups.
"So there were a series of these types of lists being used in this part of the IRS as part of their review of tax exempt applications," Werfel told reporters on a conference call today. "When I got to the IRS, we started a more comprehensive review of the operations of this part of the IRS, have been looking at documents and business operations, and we did determine and discover that there are other BOLO lists in place, and upon discovering that we also found that we believe there continued to be inappropriate or questionable criteria on these BOLO lists."
"So, based on that finding, once we came to that conclusion, we took immediate actions to suspend the use of these lists in the exempt organizations unit within the IRS," he said.
Werfel suspended the use of those lists on June 12, and more formally on June 20, but they were in place and in use by the IRS's tax exempt office until just two weeks ago.
In a statement, the IRS said they have provided copies of these BOLO lists to the appropriate Congressional committees. Werfel said the agency is also preparing to redact confidential information in order to release more information to a broader group of lawmakers soon.
"We're getting to a point where we are very close to completing that process and being able to transmit that information to a broader set of audiences on the Hill, of what those BOLO lists contain, so right now, at this moment on this call, it would be premature for me to get into specifics, but what I can assure you is that that information is being produced by the IRS for broader audiences, and it will be available very soon," he said.
The findings come in conjunction with the release of a new report based on Werfel's 30-day internal investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, which the agency acknowledged was widespread between 2010 and 2012.
The report outlined "significant management and judgment failures" at the IRS that contributed to the practice singling out groups with the words "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names.
But the investigation did not find any "intentional" wrongdoing on the part of IRS employees, nor did it find that anyone outside of the IRS was involved in the practice.
Werfel is scheduled to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday.
Werfel said five people have been replaced in the chain of command for the unit responsible for the targeting: the IRS commissioner, the deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, the acting commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, the director of exempt organizations, and the director of rulings and agreements.
The use of "be on the lookout" or BOLO terminology has been completely suspended.
The IRS will also now institute a new process for 501(c)4 applications which have been in the IRS's backlog for more than 120 days to be approved "if they self-certify that no more than 40 percent of their expenditures and voluntary person-hours will go toward political campaign intervention activities and that at least 60 percent of their expenditures and voluntary person-hours will go toward promoting social welfare."
A spokeswoman for House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp said that the IRS's targeting of conservative groups went well beyond the use of BOLO terms.
"It is one thing to flag a group, it is quite another to repeatedly target and abuse conservative groups," she said. "Tea Party groups were not just on a BOLO they were (1) sent intrusive and inappropriate questions, (2) had their donors threatened with gift taxes and (3) had their confidential information leaked."
"The Committee has welcomed all groups, regardless of affiliation, that feel they may have been targeted for extra scrutiny to come forward. The Ways and Means Committee will continue to investigate the IRS's inexcusable actions when the IRS comes to testify on the report this Thursday."
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'Singing' rats show hope for older humans with age-related voice problems
June 24, 2013 ? A new study shows that the vocal training of older rats reduces some of the voice problems related to their aging, such as the loss of vocal intensity that accompanies changes in the muscles of the larynx. This is an animal model of a vocal pathology that many humans face as they age. The researchers hope that in the future, voice therapy in aging humans will help improve their quality of life.
The research appears in The Journals of Gerontology.
University of Illinois speech and hearing science professor Aaron Johnson, who led the new study along with his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, said that aging can cause the muscles of the larynx, the organ that contains the vocal folds, to atrophy. This condition, called presbyphonia, may be treatable with vocal training, he said.
Johnson said in a healthy, young larynx the vocal folds completely close and open during vibration. This creates little puffs of air we hear as sound. In people with presbyphonia, however, the atrophied vocal folds do not close properly, resulting in a gap during vocal fold vibration.
Degradation of the neuromuscular junction, or the interface between the nerve that signals the vocal muscle to work and the muscle itself, also contributes to the symptoms of presbyphonia, Johnson said. In a healthy human, when the signal reaches the neuromuscular junction, it triggers a release of chemicals that signal the muscle to contract. But an age-related decline in the neuromuscular junction can cause weakness and fatigue in the muscle, and may result in a person having a breathy or weak voice and to become fatigued as a result of the extra effort needed to communicate.
Surgery and injections may help correct the gap between the vocal folds seen in presbyphonia, but these invasive procedures are often not viable in the elderly population, Johnson said.
His previous experience working with the elderly as a former classical singer and voice teacher propelled Johnson to "become interested in what we can do as we get older to keep our voices healthy and strong."
"We know exercise strengthens the limb musculature, but we wanted to know if vocal exercise can strengthen the muscles of the voice," Johnson said.
To find out if vocal training could have an effect on the strength and physiology of the vocal muscles in humans, Johnson turned to a rat model. Rats make ultrasonic vocalizations that are above the range of human hearing, but special recording equipment and a computer that lowers the frequency of the rat calls allows humans to perceive them. (They sound a bit like bird calls).
Because rats and humans utilize similar neuromuscular mechanisms to vocalize, the rats make ideal subjects for the study of human vocal characteristics, Johnson said.
Both the treatment and control groups contained old and young male rats. In the treatment group, a female rat was placed into a cage with a male rat. When the male expressed interest in her, the female was removed from the cage, causing the male rat to vocalize. The male was rewarded with food for these vocalizations, and after eight weeks of this operant conditioning in which rewards were only given for certain responses, all of the rats in the treatment group had been trained to increase their number of vocalizations during a training session.
At the end of the eight-week period, the researchers measured the intensity of the rats' vocalizations and analyzed the animals' larynges to see whether the training had any effect on the condition of their neuromuscular junctions.
The researchers found the trained old and young rats had similar average vocal intensities, but the untrained older rats had lower average intensities than both the trained rats and the young rats that had not been trained. They also found several age-related differences within the groups' neuromuscular mechanisms.
"Other research has found that in the elderly, there is a dispersion, or breaking apart, of the neuromuscular junction at the side that is on the muscle itself," Johnson said. "We found that in the older rats that received training, it wasn't as dispersed."
These "singing rats" are the "first evidence that vocal use and vocal training can change the neuromuscular system of the larynx," Johnson said.
"While this isn't a human study, I think this tells us that we can train ourselves to use our voices and not only reduce the effects of age on the muscles of our voices, but actually improve voices that have degraded," Johnson said.
Johnson is also affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois.
Audio file: Rats like those used in University of Illinois speech and hearing sciences professor Aaron Johnson's study make ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) that are above the range of human hearing, but special recording equipment and a computer that lowers the frequency of the rat calls allows humans to perceive them. As the recording shows, the USVs sound a bit like bird calls. : http://news.illinois.edu/WebsandThumbs/johnson,aaron/rat_vocalizations.mp3
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/rWhIRV-PWjQ/130624141418.htm
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